Not Justified by Works

Providence Baptist Church

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Good evening. Let's turn to Romans 2, and we're gonna be reading from verses 11 through 16.

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I want to share with you an analogy first before we get started with our text.

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So, have you ever been pulled over by a policeman and asked, do you know how fast you were going?

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And then you reply, yes, of course I do. I know how fast I was going. And then he just lets you go.

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And he says, well, just as long as you know the law. Well, that's never happened.

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Because it doesn't matter if you know the law inside and outside. It doesn't matter if you know it cover to cover, if you've memorized it, if you can recite it.

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If you are not a law abider, you will be given a ticket. If you don't obey it, you are known as a lawbreaker.

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So this evening, I want to set out three points for you. And I want to, I think these points are in this passage that will help us understand the riches of God's mercy and grace immeasurable.

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This, however, cannot be understood apart from the law of God.

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We do not have a sufficient gospel if we preach grace without the law.

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They have to go together. I'm going to quote from the Baptist Catechism.

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Actually, I can't because I forgot to bring it. But the law and the gospel complement each other. They don't go against each other.

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They complement each other. So I want to set out three points this evening, if you're taking notes. Number one, who

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God is to who we are or who we were, and three, who we must be.

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So what is the context of Romans 1 up to this point in Romans 2?

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So Paul is writing to the church at Rome. Before we read the text, Paul is writing to the church at Rome to believers that were meeting together, probably in different homes, and they would have read this letter aloud after they received it.

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Paul longs to meet the believers but is prevented. Thus far, you see that in Romans 1. He wishes to have fruit produced among them.

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He's eager to preach the gospel to them. And then, so that's the context.

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He gives us two verses in Romans 1, 16 and 17. Right? I'm not ashamed of the gospel for this is the power of God unto salvation.

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He gives us that hope, right? And the rest of the passage up until 321 is wrath and judgment.

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So why does Paul do this? Well, because in order to understand the joy and hope of immeasurable grace, we must be given to understand the grace that is given by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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We first must be shown how destitute we are of all worthiness and righteousness of our own.

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And I want to make this clear before I read the text. The law is good. The law is a major theme in this passage.

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It's right and true, and we ought to be abiders of the law. But, as we'll discuss later on, it can only go so far.

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It cannot save a single soul. The law cannot give us what we require to have our sins forgiven.

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We only get that in Jesus Christ. So let me read

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Romans 2 verses 11 through 16.

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For it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.

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For when Gentiles who do not have the law naturally do the things of the law, these not having the law are a law to themselves, in that they demonstrate the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience, bearing witness in their thoughts, alternately accusing or else defending them.

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On the day when according to the gospel, to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.

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So just a quick thought. Many today would subscribe to the idea of antinomianism.

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So what antinomianism is, is not only that the law is bad, but the law is irrelevant.

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We don't need the law. But beloved, that's not the biblical idea.

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Jesus, Paul and the Old Testament would not subscribe to this kind of thinking. Why would

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Paul devote this long of a passage to the law if it were not beneficial, if we do not need the law?

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We do need the law. It is a necessity and a grace of God that we have been given the law, but we will seal it.

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It can't save us. The law cannot save us. The scriptures say that the law is only good to show us wrath, that we are deserving of wrath.

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We cannot keep the law. So it's not sufficient to save a single soul.

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My first point this evening is we must understand who God is. In order to understand this doctrine of justification that we see in this passage, we must understand who

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God is. Verse 11, there is no partiality with God.

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Or as the KJV translates, there is no respect of persons with God. So God is not a respecter of persons.

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This attribute of God is fundamental to his nature. This is who he is.

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He never judges a single thing with partiality.

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In many companies, you are given a raise based on your work performance. If you have a high performance quality, you'll be given a raise as a reward.

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Others, based on their poor performance compared to others, might be not given a raise, might be fired for their poor performance.

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This not a respecter of persons means that God does not make his final judgment of you based on any external quality or trait.

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Be it your heritage, your career, your dress, what kind of car you drive, the background you came from, if you're adopted, if you're not, if your parents are alive or dead.

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He does not make his judgment on you based on these things. He is basing his judgment upon you on something that is intrinsic.

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And that does not mean that God judges differently when it comes to the heart. What this means is that God's posture towards any person is that of an unbiased one.

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He does not bless some because we have a larger following on Twitter or not bless others because they have a low credit score.

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These are irrelevant things when it comes to God's judgment of you. He judges the heart.

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People would say, God knows my heart, right? Me and Jerry talked to somebody on Saturday.

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God knows my heart. I don't go to church anywhere. I don't do these things, but God knows my heart. Well, I think we all know by now that's a bad thing.

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God judging us based on our heart is a bad thing because your heart, your nature, so the heart in the scriptures are a picture of the inner being, who we really are.

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This is what the heart means, and this is stained by sin and disbelief in God in your unregenerate state.

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So your heart, apart from Christ, disbelieves God, hates God, does not want to do the will of God.

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People use this phrase to often excuse their lack of obedience to God or in this town at least going to church, right?

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God knows my heart. I don't have to go to church to be a Christian. God knows my heart. Well, God cannot be fooled talking about God judging you.

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He cannot be fooled by your bank account or your lack thereof. He is not fooled by your circumstances, your fortunate upbringing, or your unfortunate one.

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He doesn't play into the victim victimizer mentality, right? So there's a process of thinking that everyone who is less fortunate, a certain skin color, is oppressed, right?

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And is a victim in our society, and the rich, the successful, the more privileged, these people are the oppressors.

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Well, God's not fooled by this type of thinking. If you think in this way, you're not a victim or more entitled to God.

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These are irrelevant external things when it comes to God's mind. His judgment on you is not based on these things, and this is a great comfort.

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We are not judged based on the clothes we can afford or the car we drive.

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God bases his judgment not on these things, but he bases his judgment on the heart, and that's good for the

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Christian. That is good for the Christian because we have Christ's righteousness. We have Christ abiding in us as Quatro talked about this morning.

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That's a comfort. It's not a comfort to the non -believer because they don't want

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God. Their heart is deceitful. Their heart is filled with sin. So let me give you a gospel application here.

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The cross is not a respecter of persons either. All may come to the cross for life.

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In the cross, we have all the same grounding. All are humbled and equal before the cross of Jesus.

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The cross is exclusive, however. Only one single kind of person may come, but it's not the

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Jew, it's not the Gentile, it's not the man or the woman. The only ones that the cross accepts are sinners.

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You must be a sinner to come to the cross of Christ, and that's good news for us because we all are.

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So we have this genuine and worldwide call of the gospel.

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Come, be justified. So God judges not on the external things like these, but on the heart, and the heart is made manifest in the deeds that we commit, the thoughts we have, and the decisions we make, right?

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So while this is a comfort, this is also a fearful thought. My God judges the heart of man.

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He knows my secrets, all my deeds that I've done, they're laid bare before him, and I will give account for all the things that I've done.

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This is a frightening reality if we're honest with ourselves. Your life is summed by the deeds that you have done in this life.

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People that say it doesn't matter what you do in this life, they have not read the Bible.

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It does matter what you do in this life, your works matter, and this goes for all humanity.

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It doesn't matter if you're a Jew, it doesn't matter if you're a Gentile, all will be judged by the same measure. All will be judged by the same measure, and all of this measure is according to the law of God.

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Your good works will not outweigh your bad works, right? Romans 3 verse 10 tells us there is none righteous.

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There's not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. So all the deeds that you've committed, all the things that you've done in this life that you will be judged by, they're all bad.

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They're all unrighteous, and they're all deserving of this wrath that God says you'll get, and so that's who

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God is. God's impartial. God's an impartial God. He judges with equity, and the second point

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I have is who we are. Who are we in the sight of God? What kinds of deeds have we committed before God?

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So in verse 12 and 13, it says, So we'll all be judged by these things.

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We'll all be judged by our works. William Hendrickson said in his commentary of this passage, the fact is stressed that not what a person imagines himself to be, but what he actually is in God's sight as demonstrated by his life, his works.

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This determines what will happen to him in the final judgment. Yeah, your works matter.

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I know people have said, I think God will understand. I'm a good person. This is imagining yourself to be something other than how

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God sees you in your natural state. You are hopeless. You have no good thing inside of you.

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This is how God sees you apart from Jesus Christ in your natural unregenerated state.

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You have no worthiness in yourself that he would look upon you and grant you favor. That's why we need grace.

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So all have sinned. This is true of the person with the law, read to them or given to them, and it's true of the one who has never heard the law.

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They are both judged by the same measure, the law of God. Verse 14 and 15.

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For when the Gentiles do not have the law, naturally do the things of the law, these not having the law are a law to themselves.

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And that they demonstrate the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.

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So we have a law written on our hearts. So even if someone has not given us a physical law, we know the law.

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That's why so many cultures today, think of these cultures like these remote places and they're still together and they're still thriving.

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Why? Because they just don't murder each other. Why? Because they understand murder is wrong. Even though maybe the gospel hasn't been given to them, maybe the ten commandments haven't been given to them, they have a law that's written on their hearts.

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They have a conscience. Murder is wrong. Lying is wrong. Stealing is wrong. All these things are wrong.

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Why? Because they're made in the image of God. Because God has given all people a conscience, all people a law that's written on their hearts.

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So we are all deserving to perish because Romans 6 23, which is, what's the wages of our sin?

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The wages of sin is death, right? The wages of our sin is death. We have all sinned. We've all fallen short of the glory of God.

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We've all fallen short of the biblical requirements for obedience. And what is that? That's perfection.

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That's the biblical requirement that God must have. And the creator has the divine right to require whatever he will of his creation.

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He made us. You might be saying, God, that's unfair. You know I can't keep the law.

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You don't say that to God. He's the creator. He made you and he has the right to demand whatever he wills of you.

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So there's a couple things that tell us that we have this sin. One, we can read in Genesis.

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We have this original sin. Adam was our first lawbreaker. By his sin and by his multiplying of the earth, we are beneficiaries of that sin.

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We all have the same DNA as Adam, unrighteousness. Therefore, all mankind is born under this curse, under this misery, under the weight of this guilt.

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All mankind have this and therefore we're under the umbrella of these lawbreakers.

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We have a cursed nature because of Adam. It's not just we're good on the inside and we just do these bad things.

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That sin is somehow an external thing. We are filled with sin.

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Our nature is that of sin. So the reason we sin is not because we're forced to.

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It is not because of some external thing. It is because we ourselves love sin. We do it willfully.

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We do it by our own volition because our nature is stained with sin. Our very inclinations are governed by this power of sin.

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We are bound like a fetter to our nature. What I mean by that is that all our actions are governed by this power of sin.

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We cannot do anything that is not sin if we're not regenerated.

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So the reason I say that is because we can't please God. We can't live a life that's pleasing to God if we are not putting our faith in Jesus Christ.

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Our works will not gain us acceptance. Our works are only displeasing to God if we're not in Christ.

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So we have this original sin and then we have this sin that we have we commit once we're born. So our default is to do the very opposite what the law demands.

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The law of God is untasteful and counterproductive to our heart. We don't want to obey it.

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We will do anything to flee from its requirements and how can we dispute this reality?

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We look around us today that we're all sinners. Our world is broken and people are not basically good on the inside.

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We are a culture of lawlessness. We believe and live as if God's law is irrelevant.

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In a world today where children are abused, where there's abortion that's rampant, when wives are being left, when

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I heard the story of these people that were parents and I think they were on drugs or something, but the police found the children outside in a swing and their diapers were not changed.

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They had been out there for days. They had starved. Why? That's not surprising.

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We look at that and it's terrible, right? That is a terrible reality. However, it's not surprising because that's sin.

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That's our sin manifested. That's what people will do in our natural state. This Disney type mentality that you're just good.

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That's foolishness, right? So I believe as a culture we have adopted this idea of antinomianism.

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So although the majority would not say it aloud, we would not confess it that we hate the law, we are a society of lawbreakers, right?

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We have been this way from the beginning. We want to defund the police because we don't want law enforcers, those who would hold us accountable to this law and stop crimes, right?

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And the same with God. We take God out of the schools. We take God out of our society because we don't want to be accountable to somebody who tells us what the law is, someone who enforces the law.

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We don't want that. We are disobeyers of God law and we stand accused before a

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God who does see the intentions of the heart, right? And what is the penalty? The penalty is death.

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So you may say, I haven't killed someone, anybody, right? I haven't done this or that.

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I'm okay. Well, here's the problem. You cannot escape this curse, right?

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Matthew 22, verses 36 through 40, Jesus is speaking and he said to him,

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You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. And this is the great and first commandment.

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And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

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So think on this. This is some application for you. Have you done that? Have you loved the

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Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength? If you haven't, which

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I know we haven't, you stand guilty and you stand condemned before a holy

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God and bound for hell if nothing changes. If not for Christ, you're bound for hell. So, but where you stumbled, he became your righteousness.

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Where you sinned, he became your propitiation, your wrath satisfying sacrifice.

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Do you not see the great grace we have in the Lord Jesus? Though we were dead in our sins, he died for us, the ungodly and the unrighteous, the sinner.

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Jesus, fully God and fully man, God incarnate, our Lord who obeyed the law perfectly without sin of commission or omission.

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He let the people nail him to the tree for our sin for our sins.

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He died being our propitiation, taking the father's wrath that was reserved for you and me.

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He took that on himself. What a great savior we have in Jesus.

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Our Lord did not deserve this. He was the only one who didn't deserve this. Then Jesus, completing the work of obedience and on the cross ascended to the father, satisfying the requirements for us and to be saved.

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And now he's reigning and making intercession for all his people. So, he was the only one who could perfectly keep the law and because no one else can keep it because of our sin, we cannot escape the coming judgment.

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So, as I spoke on just a little bit what is the law for? Why do we have this law?

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God, we can't keep it. We can't accomplish your requirements. We see the law and we only feel more guilty.

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Why do we have it? To show us this. We are inept and unable to keep

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God's law and then this drives us to the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Jesus is our righteousness, perfect in every way, and Jesus beckons us to bring our sin, our guilt, and he will receive us.

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And not only receive us, but he will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So, this is justification in a nutshell.

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Picture a courtroom. We're in a courtroom. God the father is the judge. You have committed these crimes.

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You stand guilty. You stand condemned. You have no hope, right?

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And instead of God just sweeping our sins under the rug, he puts them on Jesus Christ, right?

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He says, since he's taken your sin, you are therefore not guilty. And not just that, that we're not guilty, but we get righteousness.

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God sees us and he doesn't just see a man who's not guilty, but he sees a man who has obeyed

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God perfectly. That is a great hope that we have, but it's only for those who have faith.

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So, this brings me to my third point. What we must be.

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What we must possess. So, verse 13, again, for it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified, right?

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So, what does this verse mean? And I've talked this whole time. You can't be justified by your works.

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You can't be just only Jesus Christ. And then 13 says, the only ones who'll be just before God are the ones who do the law.

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Well, that doesn't make sense, right? So, let me tell you what this verse means. And let me first explain what it does not mean.

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It does not mean that there are those who do the law, obey the law, keep the law, and by the law will be justified.

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The whole book of Romans makes that clear. That would be a misunderstanding of this passage, right?

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That would be a face value interpretation, right? If you had none, you didn't have the rest of the

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Bible, all you had was verse 13. You would think, I do the law and God will justify me.

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But we have the rest of the Bible. So, we have been given a law that requires perfect obedience.

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We cannot accomplish that. So, what an unfair God we have, right? God is unfair.

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Well, no, that's not true. What a loving and gracious God we have who sent

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Christ to satisfy the righteous requirements of the law in our place and to give us the benefits of this obedience, i .e.

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being accepted into heaven. God looking at us and accepting us, right?

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Being pleasing to God. Those are the benefits that we get from Christ's perfect obedience.

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So, we cannot deduce this passage to mean that anyone could be justified by keeping the law, not the

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Jew that had it or the Gentile that never heard it. Why? Because no one has perfect obedience.

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Only Christ. That's the only obedience that matters. Those who hope in obedience to justify them to God are hopeless and are called

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Pharisees. They're religious but lost. Dr. Steve Lawson says they're lost church members.

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We may not commit penance. We may not sacrifice animals.

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But what we do sometimes in order to maybe not say audibly, but think in our brains, justifying ourselves, go to church, reading our

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Bible, right? Praying. Sometimes we can think God will accept me more because of the things

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I'm doing. I'm coming here at Sunday. God, I love you.

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I'm coming here, right? I'm doing what your law demands. I'm a doer of the law. I'm coming to church, right?

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But that would be a practical kind of agreeance with that, right?

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Because you and your spouse didn't get a fight today and you showed great humility and restraint and you stopped your tongue, you're justified more than you were yesterday, right?

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That's not true. You are justified once and the same your whole life.

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All believers are justified equally on equal ground and you are not justified more than another, right?

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The reason I'm telling you this in a sunny night crowd, because I think we're all Christians, is because I'm prone to think this way too.

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I'm prone to think that I'm more deserving of this grace some days. That God loves me less some days when

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I sin. And the fact that you think you're more deserving of grace, that doesn't even make sense, right?

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Grace is something that's a gift. You can't earn it. So many times I base how

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God loves me on my performance, how God looks upon me on how well

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I've obeyed the law that day. But if you are in Christ, if you are justified through faith, then

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God accepts you the same as the first day you are justified to the day that you die.

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You are justified the same. So there's another thing that I want to talk about.

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I don't want to gloss over this reality. The doers of the law, now hear me when

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I say this, the doers of the law are justified before God, right?

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Perfect doers. Those are people who are justified before God. I have thought to myself before,

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God has no obligation to justify anyone by their works. That would be incorrect.

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God, according to his justice and equity, would be obligated to justify all those who perfectly obeyed his will.

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God would be obligated. But their problem is that no one has ever done that, save Jesus Christ.

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That's the only one that's perfectly obeyed the law. A person justified by God is a person justified through faith, faith in Jesus Christ for the redemption of the soul.

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You are declared righteous. You do not become righteous. Let's go to Romans four really quick.

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It's right there. And I'm going to read verses one through,

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I'll read through six. What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, has found?

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For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

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For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

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Now to the one who works, his wage is not counted according to grace, but according to what he is due.

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But to the one who does not work, but believes upon him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

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Just as David also speaks to the blessing of the man to whom God counts righteous apart from works.

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I'll read verse seven. Blessed are those whose laws and deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered. Right? So we see here in Abraham, in the

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Old Testament, how does God even accept Abraham? Because it was counted to him as righteousness.

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He had faith in what God has said. He had not even yet circumcised himself.

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And he received this vision. Sarah was barren. She couldn't have any more children.

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And he's really, I'm like a hundred years old. I'm fixing to die.

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I don't even have an heir. God takes him out and says, number the stars, right? That's going to be your children.

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And guess what he did? He believed God and it was counted to him as righteous. So we see that only a man can be justified, not by works, but by faith, by belief in God only.

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So just an application because of the faith you possess, right?

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Because of the faith that you possess from putting your trust in Jesus Christ, you now seek to live morally, right?

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You seek to live righteously and godly, right? You will be a doer of the law.

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You don't just hear the law. You do the law. You cherish it. You live by it.

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You order your life to it. You meditate on it. You herald it. You command it. This is the life of a person who has faith in Christ.

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Does this mean we ever sin or that we never sin? No. But when we do sin, we seek to come back to obedience, right?

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To the gospel, that we are justified by the righteous works of Christ, not our own works.

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So just as the law cannot justify, it does not condemn the believer, right?

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It is God's grace alone who grants faith and it's Christ's righteousness alone that secures the believer.

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Keeping the law has no power to gain more acceptance from God and the believer forever rests upon Christ's obedience.

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From the point of justification to the time that they die, they are resting upon the obedience of Christ.

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It does not become an elementary thing to the believer, right? I have been justified.

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I put my faith in Jesus Christ. Now move on to better things. You know, I'm not saying this is true, but sometimes what we think,

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I'll move on to theology, all these like fancy big words that are good.

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However, we see the foundation of our salvation is something we move past.

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That's not true. We must keep continually resting upon Christ's obedience.

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So it's not something you can do to be justified, but what you must be, what you must possess, it is faith.

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So you must be broken. You must be undone and repentant.

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You must recognize your sins against the law giver, that you cannot be accepted by God based on your attempt to obey the law.

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You cannot be excused. So you must be a man in sackcloth and ashes, right?

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In the Old Testament, these men would put on ashes and sackcloth and rip their clothing to show their humility, to show that they have sinned and their need for God.

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This is the only proper and appropriate response, a mourning over one's own sin.

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And this is only wrought by God. You cannot pull yourself up by your bootstraps and think,

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I will just do this repentance, like because that's a work, right?

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I can't do this plus faith. I'll work to repent. And because I repent, then

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God will give me faith. If you do that, then you have something to boast in. But as we see in Romans 4, you can't boast before God because you don't have work.

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So even repentance is not something of yourself. It is a grace and is only wrought by God.

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That's why we say grace alone through faith alone. So you cannot will yourself to feel this godly sorrow and repent, right?

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Only the Holy Spirit can give you this from a new nature. And unless you have this, this maybe attempt that you have to appease

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God, it will always be worthless and inadequate. This will be an inadequate appeasement to God.

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I am not saying that we should not seek to please God. That is what we ought to do as Christians.

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However, if you're looking at that work that you're doing in order to be justified, it is worthless.

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It's sin, right? The Bible says that if it's not in faith, it's sin. God's not pleased with that.

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So you cannot accomplish this act. This is why Jesus did not give a command to Nicodemus in John 3.

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He told him, you must be born again. What must I do to see the kingdom?

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And Jesus says you must be born again. He didn't say you must do this, this, this, and this, and God will accept you.

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You must be born again. So you understand what you must do, right?

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It's nothing. You cannot, just like Adam did not contribute a single thing to his birth, so you cannot contribute a thing to your second birth.

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So you are, but you are commanded something, right? Repent and believe. And if you have repented and you have believed, you are therefore born again.

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You are declared righteous. You are justified. And because of that, you'll be a doer of the law, not to be justified, but because you are justified.

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So in closing, this is an application for the Christian. See afresh the great grace we have in Jesus Christ.

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You are now accepted by God to the glory of God.

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You are now accepted where you could not be accepted by God. You're now accepted because of Christ's perfect obedience.

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Run to Christ because you cannot satisfy him by your works. Run to Christ with your inadequacies, your failures, and trust his grace to be sufficient to you, right?

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The burden of atoning for your sins are not resting on you. Jesus atoned for your sins.

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So live freely in the liberty to obey him, not out of duty alone, but in joy and satisfaction, right?

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Live to righteousness. God has redeemed you by his blood and to the non -believer.

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Maybe you are a non -believer. I don't know. Only God knows. But this grace is offered to you this evening.

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Find your solace in Christ. Christ is offered as a free and a genuine call.

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He says, all come to me, all who are heavy laden, all who fill this guilt of their sin and trying to bear it and trying to bring it before God and say,

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I'm trying my best. Quit that. Bring your failures and your sins and your inadequacies to God.

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He will receive you. Cast them on Jesus Christ, and he will take them.

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And he says that if you come to me, he won't cast you out, right? He will receive you.

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So that's the call. Be encouraged.

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And the non -believer, think of these things. You need Christ. So let's pray.

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Lord, we are grateful for Jesus Christ. So many times we are not grateful enough.

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We do not express our thankfulness to him enough. But unless we have

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Christ, we are hopeless and helpless. And so God, keep us thankful.

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Keep us humble. God, you say in Psalm 138, you don't even know the proud.

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Lord, keep us humble. Keep us dependent on you. That is only how anyone is saved, right?

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Our dependence on you through humility, not the proud. Lord, I pray that the word that has been preached would not return void, that it would do what you intended it to do for your glory.